UN to send mission to Jenin

THE UN Security Council has adopted a resolution to send a fact-finding mission to Jenin to discover what happened during the Israeli army's attack on the West Bank town.

The decision to send the mission was passed unaminously last night in New York.

The Israelis announced this afternoon that it will co-operate fully with the mission. Gideon Meir, a spokesman for the foreign minister, said the army could provide evidence that would refute Palestinian claims that a "massacre" took place in in Jenin when the town was invaded on April 3.

The resolution came after Shimon Peres, the Israeli foreign minister, told the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan that Israel would welcome a UN official "to clarify the facts".

He said: "Israel has nothing to hide regarding the operation in Jenin. Our hands are clean."

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Earlier this week, the UN envoy to the region described the devastation in Jenin as "horrific beyond belief" and attacked Israel for preventing aid agencies entering the town.

Israel withdrew its troops to the perimeter of Jenin yesterday and Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, the Israeli defence minister, said today that a gradual withdrawal from Palestinian areas would continue.

However, violence erupted again in the Gaza Strip following the killing of six Palestinians in two separate raids by the Israeli army yesterday. Hundreds of mourners gathered in Gaza City for the funerals of two members of the Islamic Jihad killed in the fighting.

Israeli soldiers also blocked aid workers trying to take medicine and food into the West Bank town of Nablus, reports said today.

President George W Bush supported the international investigation in his weekly radio broadcast and urged Israel to "continue its withdrawals" from Palestinian areas.

But Mr Bush continued to put pressure on Yasser Arafat, saying the Palestinian leadership must "act on its words of condemnation against terror". He added that "all Arab nations must confront terror in their own region".

Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, welcomed Israel's decision to co-operate with the UN resolution. He said: "The Israeli government has itself claimed that its action was necessary and proportionate. The point I have been making to Israeli ministers is that, if this is so, they have nothing to fear from a full inquiry."

Meanwhile, Tony Blair called for a new Middle East peace process to try to end the bloodshed between Israelis and Palestinians.

Mr Blair described events in Jenin as "appalling and tragic". But he was careful to apply the same description to the attacks on Israelis by Palestinian suicide bombers.

He said it was not enough for world leaders to sit around "wringing their hands" and called for an international effort to restart the peace process.

Mr Blair added that a succesful peace initiative would have to led by the US and Arab nations, although the European Union could play a role in any negotiations.